Jean-Luc Godard, the daringly innovative director and provocateur whose unconventional camerawork, disjointed narrative style and penchant for radical politics changed the course of filmmaking in the 1960s, leaving a lasting influence on it, died Tuesday at his home in Rolle, Switzerland. He was 91.
His longtime legal adviser, Patrick Jeanneret, said Godard died by assisted suicide, having suffered from "multiple disabling pathologies.”
"He could not live like you and me, so he decided with a great lucidity, as he had all his life, to say, ‘Now it’s enough,’” Jeanneret said in a phone interview. Godard wanted to die with dignity, Jeanneret said, and "that was exactly what he did.”